Hwang Jung-eun is one of the brightest stars of the new South Korean generation – she’s Han Kang’s favourite, and the novel we’re publishing scooped the prestigious Bookseller’s Award, for critically-acclaimed fiction that also has a wide popular appeal. She stands out for her focus on social minorities – her protagonists are slum inhabitants, trans women, orphans – and for the way she melds this hard-edged social critique with obliquely fantastical elements and offbeat dialogue.
